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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 1:53PM
#11
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If you are having bad luck and losing a lot, play Swiss as other people have said. You are still paying money, but should be able to get a pack or two back effectively cutting the cost of your next draft by 4-8 tix. Also, you can save money by trading tix for packs. I think RtR are going for around 3.35 a pack right now.
I have been doing some 4-pack sealed as well and while it's not quite as fun as drafting I still enjoy it and it is by far the best bang for your buck.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 2:24PM
#12
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Date Joined:
Jul 12, 2007
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It certainly does feel like I have mana issues a lot more online than in real life. Trying to work on it not tilting me though. A little hard when running 2 colors and can never draw your second color or your second of a certain color while you watch your opponent play all 4 different basic lands of their deck in order without any fetching. Happened the other night twice to me in the same match. So I ended up holding out for a bit before I eventually lost.
The other thing I try to watch is if the other person is flooding or having mana issues too.
As far as drafting I try to do it as much as possible. Sometimes once a week, sometimes once a day. In real life and online. Though recently my in real life drafting has gone down while my online has gone up simply because of availability. Plus I am kind of burned out on RTR draft right now so online offers the ability to do some of the other formats.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 3:17PM
#13
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Date Joined:
Oct 11, 2007
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Yeah I was doing swiss at first and I was winning so much I ventured into 4322. I will go back to swiss and scale back a bit, save up some capital for gatecrash. Maybe I'll try some M13?
Swiss will be more relaxing; if I lose a match to manascrew at least that's not the end.
And yeah it's $14 not $15. A little cheaper if you get all tix and the trade for packs. Of course I am trading off my cards for more tix when possible, as I have little to no interest in constructed currently. There just aren't many cards, seems like, that are worth much.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 09, 2013 - 5:55PM
#14
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Date Joined:
Oct 22, 2011
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I too draft once, maybe twice, a week. Buying packs with tix and selling cards aggressively on MtGO should keep costs down. Right now I am spending roughly $15 a month to keep up this pace.
I prefer to do Swiss in the beginnings to learn a set, and to see more cards and interactions since I get to play all 3 games, but will move to 84s after a while as the expected value for an 84 is better than Swiss as long as your match win percentage is above 50%.
Side note, do either Swiss or 84s, 4322s are a rip-off, there's 1 less prize pack in the payout so your expected value is lower than either Swiss or 84s for any win percentage.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 10, 2013 - 10:01AM
#15
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2009
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I too draft once, maybe twice, a week. Buying packs with tix and selling cards aggressively on MtGO should keep costs down. Right now I am spending roughly $15 a month to keep up this pace.
I prefer to do Swiss in the beginnings to learn a set, and to see more cards and interactions since I get to play all 3 games, but will move to 84s after a while as the expected value for an 84 is better than Swiss as long as your match win percentage is above 50%.
Side note, do either Swiss or 84s, 4322s are a rip-off, there's 1 less prize pack in the payout so your expected value is lower than either Swiss or 84s for any win percentage.
It's a little more complicated than win percentage over 50%, because your win percentage isn't going to be constant across formats. But if it were constant than 50% would be the tipping point where you'd be better off playing 8-4 than Swiss.
The only plus I can see playing in 4322 is that you're playing against a group of people who can't immediately see that the EV is lower which should make it easier to win in that format 
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5 months ago ::
Jan 10, 2013 - 11:35AM
#16
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Date Joined:
Jul 12, 2007
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I think it goes beyond the 1 pack difference. If you constantly win your first match, than lose your second, you are already ahead in the 4322 over 84 and with swiss you still have to win 1 more game just to be even at this point. Yes there is one pack difference, but if that one pack was going to someone else anyway what would you care? i.e. going to the person who loses their first two matches and then gets the extra pack from their opponent dropping at that point. Either that or the extra pack going to someone who beat you in the second round.
Probably really comes down to not only your win percentage, but where you get those wins. This isn't fool proof because you get a random opponent in the first round, and random opponent in the next round based on how they did. Though you can probably see if you pretty regularly lose or win your first game, and also if you regularly make it into the finals.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 10, 2013 - 12:08PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Sep 30, 2010
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I've seen pretty solid mathematical proof that unless your winning percentage changes significantly from 4322s to 84s (like, we're talking ~20% here), there is no point where 4322s are more profitable than both Swiss and 84s purely in term of prize payout. Your case has to be ridiculously specific for 4322s to be the most profitable. It is not common enough that I'm going to believe anyone saying they are on that exact level without showing me detailed statistics of their drafts of Swiss, 4322 and 84s (probably at least 20 of each queue, preferably hundreds but that is unrealistic).
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5 months ago ::
Jan 11, 2013 - 2:03AM
#18
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As someone who used to play only a little sealed, I'll tell you who 4322 appeals to.....people like me that know they won't normally win with a 3-0 record. Even 2nd place seemed tough to come by. I was usually 3rd or 4th....and getting 2 packs back when I only had to put 3 up plus the entry fee meant that I was only losing a few bucks per draft even though I was coming in dead last.
Sure, if you're an awesome drafter and consistantly win, 8-4 seems the better way to go.
For the "rest" of us....there's a reason why there's more 4322 in the queues than 84
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5 months ago ::
Jan 11, 2013 - 9:11AM
#19
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Date Joined:
Jun 15, 2009
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At the point everyone is playing Swiss there is no incentive for anyone to switch to a different payout structure. If the people who are consistently going WWW and WWL in Swiss decided they could get a better payout in 8-4 and switched into it, they would now be competing for the same number of total prize packs with people who switched into 8-4 for the same reasons. They can't all be winners, and at the point the people who are winning less in 8-4 than they were in Swiss realize this they will drop out and return to Swiss. Once that happens the people who were initially doing better in 8-4 than they were in Swiss will win less because the people they used to beat are back in Swiss. This cycle repeats itself until everyone is back in Swiss. 4322 has the same problems as 8-4 (steeper payout structure than Swiss), in addition to paying out one less pack in total.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 12, 2013 - 12:17PM
#20
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Date Joined:
Oct 11, 2007
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I'm happy to be back in swiss. If I lose a match to screw/flood at least i have 2 other matches to at least play the deck I drafted. If I look at it from the perspective of "playing more" and worry less about the payout then it's more relaxing and enjoyable. And I don't mind putting in a few dollars here and there because of a lower payout. I just feel like if I were in an 8-4 my blood pressure would elevate every time I lost to screw/flood.
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